The Light of History: On Dominarian Stained Glass
A trip into the fourth dimension
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It was during the COVID-19 pandemic that I first read Marcel Proust’s Swann’s Way, an astounding novel that attends to the way that the past seems soaked into the fabric of the present. Between scant recollections of mental breakdowns in my car and mental breakdowns in my bedroom, I retain a memory of this passage, when protagonist Marcel reflects on the stained glass windows of a church he loved as a child:
all of them were so old that you could see, here and there, their silvery antiquity sparkling with the dust of centuries and showing in its threadbare brilliance the texture of their lovely tapestry of glass. There was one among them which was a tall panel composed of a hundred little rectangular panes, of blue principally, like an enormous pack of cards of the kind planned to beguile King Charles VI; but, either because a ray of sunlight had gleamed through it or because my own shifting glance had sent shooting across the window, whose colours died away and were rekindled by turns, a rare and flickering fire—the next instant it had taken on the shimmering brilliance of a peacock’s tail, then quivered and rippled in a flaming and fantastic shower that streamed from the groin of the dark and stony vault down the moist walls, as though it were along the bed of some grotto glowing with sinuous stalactites that I was following my parents, who preceded me with their prayer- books clasped in their hands. (Prous trans. Moncrieff and Kilmartin, pp. 81-82).
In Proust’s description, the glass’ spiritual power grows beyond its literal religious referent; it pulses with life, with vitality, with energy soaked both in the glow of the past and the light of the present. The result, he says there seems to be “a four-dimensional space—the name of the fourth being Time—extending through the centuries its ancient nave, which, bay after bay, chapel after chapel, seemed to stretch across and conquer not merely a few yards of soil, but each successive epoch from which it emerged triumphant, hiding the rugged barbarities of the eleventh century in the thickness of its walls.”
It was perhaps under Proust’s influence that I came to love the stained glass motifs in 2021’s Dominaria United. But I’ve been thinking, recently, about what makes stained glass so fitting for this set—and why it’s become such a staple of Dominaria in the years since.
An initiate to Magic could be forgiven for thinking that Dominaria is the plane of stained glass. In the last few years of Magic story and art direction—particularly since the end of War of the Spark, which cemented the thematic pivot from superheroic planeswalkers to the planes themselves—it’s become necessary to confer one each plane a distinct signature style for the art treatments, showcases frames, special reprints. Eldraine’s special style evokes mid-nineteenth-century storybooks; Ravnica’s, the dense symbolism and light colors of Art Nouveau; and Dominaria, stained glass.
What makes this choice interesting is that among Magic’s planes, Dominaria is perhaps the least “top-down” in its design. This is, of course, because Dominaria wasn’t “designed,” at least not in the same way as Arcavios or Kaldheim or other sets. Mark Rosewater has outlined the intriguing and eclectic way that Dominaria came into being, but in short: Alpha references a world called Dominia, which was actually the name of the multiverse, at the center of which was a world called Dominaria (the word “Dominaria” would not appear until the Tempest Block)—and even then, this world was a bricabrac medley of generic high fantasy tropes.
The world take on a clearer shape in the Antiquities Block, which told the story of the Brothers’ War—though this block made scant reference to the Dominarians of Alpha, instead telling an already-ancient historical story about the continent of Terisiare. It wouldn’t be until the Weatherlight Saga, a more cinematic sequence of sets based around Dominaria, that areas like Benalia, Llanowar, Keld, and Hurloon would take on more color.
In this sense, Dominaria is a world already suffused with history: it comes to us as always already a recuperation of past materials. This principle became foundational in the design of the smash-hit Dominaria (2018); as Mark Rosewater explains, the set’s overarching theme was “Rich history, vibrant renewal.” Paralleling the way that the design team and players alike were returning to all that they had loved about Dominaria from the Magic’s very orgins, Dominaria was narratively, artistically, and mechanically organized around the way that the societies of Dominaria found renewal in history after numerous devastating apocalypses.
The first glimpse of this renewal came, however, not in Dominaria, but in 2007’s Future Sight, a meta-experiment that envisaged what the future of Magic and its worlds might be. Card #172 of the set is New Benalia, which depicts a multicolored dome rising from a verdant plane—glittering with nothing other than stained glass. This was the seed—and it would flower into an entire world’s aesthetic.
Cut to 2018: stained glass was there at the beginning of Dominaria, in more ways than one. Dominaria art director Mark Winters has shared, the image of Alex Konstad’s Adamant Will—a blade shattering against a Benalish stained glass shield—was one of the first card concepts envisioned for the set. And fittingly, Card 001 is Chase Stone’s Karn, Scion of Urza, in which the titular robot palms a Dominarian globe as a stained glass image of Urza glows in lemon and blue light.
Stained glass appeared most in the imagery of New Benalia, the larger of Dominaria’s White factions. In earlier phases of Dominarian design, Benalia was a fairly generic federal-chivalric society full of generic knights wearing generic armor; it was noteworthy only for being the homeland of Gerrard Capashen, the roguish protagonist of the Weatherlight Saga. Dominaria’s “History and Revival” theme, however, gave Benalia new life. Now, Benalish culture and society were organized around venerating—living up to—their past heroes, especially Gerrard himself.
Given Benalia’s connection with another White Dominarian faction, the Catholic-inspired Church of Serra, stained glass was the perfect aesthetic motif. Evoking the churches of medieval Europe, Benalish and Serran stained glass appears mystical, radiating history as much as color. The visual innovation of Dominaria was to make stained glass not just a relic but also a living work of art—as the flavor text for Knight of New Benalia reads, Benalish glazeplate is “both beautiful and deadly.”
In the same way that the stained glass of Proust seems soaked in time, the best paintings of Benalish stained glass radiate with power both ancient and alive. On Anthony Palumbo’s astonishing Blessed Light, the enchanted stained glass of a Benalish chapel enshrines historical heroes in prismatic grace—and also incinerates a demonic interloper. Noah Bradley’s History of Benalia makes stained glass both narrative subject and narrative vehicle; while the card mechanically retells the story of Benalia’s founding, its art comprises an in-universe window that seems not inert but vital. The Benalish people, as this card has it, are made of the same luminous history they venerate. Chris Rahn’s Lyra Dawnbringer literalizes this possibility: against the flaming gold of the Benalish sunset, Lyra’s abstract stained glass looks like liquid light running over her body, from the shining orange of her shoulders to the icy blues and purples of her legs.
My favorite of this set—no surprise to readers of these articles, I think—is Chris Rallis’ Danitha Capashen, Paragon. While the painting’s stained glass is (relatively) subtle compared to Lyra, Rallis’ level of detail is astonishing. I count six different colors of glass set into her armor and sword, and each glass pane has a different amount of light. This Danitha visualizes the integration of history and life: if stained glass embodies the archaic and past, then Danitha’s movement—beginning to pull her sword from its scabbard—imparts the stained glass with motion, flinging the history into a still-unfurling future.
If there is any problem with Dominaria’s stained glass, it’s the lack of consistency. In some cases, like Rallis’ and Rahn’s paintings, the stained glass looks like stained glass; in others cases, the glass looks more like colored stripes (no dig intended for the incredible work of Ryan Pancoast, Bastien L. Daharme, and more, which brought New Benalia to life). But this minor issue was gone in our next visit to Dominaria, Dominaria United, which features 27 non-showcase cards with stained glass—all of which look like stained glass, whether set in windows or swords or armor.
Magali Villeneuve’s Danitha, Benalia’s Hope extends the narrative begun in Danitha Capashen, Paragon: Danitha’s sword, now fully unsheathed, glows purple, pink, and yellow in the Benalish sunrise as Danitha looks toward an uncertain future. In Ernanda Souza’s Guardian of New Benalia, the light is so bright that it flares against the “camera” through which we view the guardian—and if she brings history into the present, she’s also an inspiring symbol for the future, as emblemized in the child she shields.
The set’s focus on Phyrexian sleeper agents offered a further avenue for telling stained glass stories. As Josu Hernaiz’s Benalish Sleeper succumbs to Phyresis, he literally deconstructs his stained glass equipment physicalizing the corruption of Benalish life; the stained glass that backlights him, semiotically infected by this betrayal, reads more unsettling than inspiring. Mark Winters’ Aron, Benalia’s Ruin is perhaps the most haunting. Stained glass, the symbol of Benalia’s bright storied past and bright future, is turned inside out: over Aron’s left shoulder we see a dim stained glass portrait not of Gerrard Capashen but his nemesis Yawgmoth; the bright light on Aron’s armor comes not from holy glass but from the way it literally melts away from him, the colors smearing together as they slough like molten lava between his fingers.
I would be remiss if I didn’t mention my favorite stained glass work in Magic, Randy Vargas’ Danitha, New Benalia’s Light. The Danitha of this painting is one that, elaborating Villeneuve’s, must face a difficult future—in this case, one in which she leads Benalia after having been forced to kill her Phyrexianized father. But history is not against Danitha, it’s with her: the entire chamber beams with prismatic radiance, a life that seems to exceed the material world. Over her shoulder is none other than Aron Capashen, his canonized image resting a hand on Danitha’s shoulder. The past upholds her; the future looks out in front of her.
Conventional paintings are just the tip of the stained glass iceberg.
The set’s full art basic lands are Magali Villeneuve’s incredible stained glass treatments, inspired by Benalish visual motifs. These are some of my favorite lands in Magic, not just because of Villenueve’s command of color—making black stained glass is no easy feat—but also because of her talent for light. Paintings like Danitha, Benalia’s Hope had the advantage of using a clear light source—the sun, in that work’s case—but with the lands, Villeneuve had to entirely imagine the way the light would shine through the invisible light source “behind” the land.
Then there are the Showcase treatments, which tackle the same challenge as Villeneuve’s basics—and to great effect. If Showcase art channels either the diegetic art style of a Magic world (like Strixhaven’s illuminated manuscripts, which are presumably being read in the titular school’s libraries) or the art which inspired the world (like Kamigawa: Neon Dynasty’s mixture of anime art and ukiyo-e painting), Dominaria United’s Showcase style evokes the formal principle of modern Dominaria: living history, the inherited legendarium that seems to burst through every crack of the universe. Daniel Lieske’s Squee, Dubious Monarch is enshrined—the light originating from “behind” Squee’s shoulder—in a halo as though he’s a long-venerated saint—even as the living Squee comes into being precisely by playing the card.
The best of these treatments emerges from this dialectic between life and history. Carly Mazur’s stained glass cards consist of realistically rendered figures divided by the lines of set glass, so full of life that they seem to be ready to leap away from the frozen glass. Mazur’s Queen Allenal of Ruadach is especially effective. Allenal’s eyes look out at us with deep humanity, shining with a wry tenderness; Mazur pushes the medium to its limits, complicating the flat colors of stained glass with background patterns, intensely detailed flowers, and gradations in Allenal’s complexion. Although it’s not exactly accurate to historical stained glass, it’s precisely this experimentation that makes life thrum inside the glass.
Other stained glass treatments add depth to Dominaria’s world by introducing figural imagery. While most Magic paintings must confine themselves to representational literalism, the diegetic artistry of the stained glass Showcase allows us to envision the way that these figures might be mythologized in real-time. Stenn, Paranoid Partisan (Tyler Crook) is cast in the golden light of his scroll, but behind him lurks a shadowy figure—for Stenn is, in fact, a Phyrexian sleeper agent. Tori D’Avenant, Fury Rider (Jody Clark) seems to both belong to history and burst out of it, galloping out of an unseen background with explosive force. Jhoira, Ageless Innovator (Lisa Heidhoff) is explicitly abstract, embedding the members of the Weatherlight in miniature portraits and letting the ship herself float in Jhoira’s hand. These kinds of successes locked in the stained glass style as the Dominarian style, evident in special treatments like the Multiverse Legends of March of the Machine and the Special Guests of Foundations.
What’s powerful is not merely that stained glass looks cool, though of course it does. Stained glass represents what makes Dominaria special—it gives life to the “History/Renewal” theme. That thematic throughline works because it points to the fact that, as I mentioned earlier, Dominaria is not like Amonkhet or Bloomburrow or even Ravnica, Dominaria; it was not designed from the top down. Nor can we really say that it was designed from the bottom up. Really, Dominaria is designed synthetically, in the creation of a new world that precedes from the scraps of something old and opens onto a new future. To be certain, the world was developed purposely and there has always been plenty of original creation, but every phase of Dominaria’s development consisted in re-adapting, reforming, and revitalizing the scattered material that came before it (check out Ethan Fleischer’s article on creating Dominaria’s map for an example). Dominaria feels alive precisely because its history is splintered and eclectic, always demanding we pick up the pieces and find a throughline—as all our temporal existence requires.
Stained glass may just be the perfect medium for this historical synthesis. We encounter it as already historical, the essence of a distant history—even as it radiates vitality. It throws the light of history, fragmented and splintered but luminous, onto our lives.